Thanks for sharing. Search engine optimization is indeed one of the most crucial areas in Internet marketing, it is a perfect bridge between technology and business….

While I do appreciate your comments – I would say you are exactly the kind of “opportunist” that caused Derek to rant.

Let’s use our names when leaving blog comments. Let’s be real people.

Thanks everybody for your comments…I’m on the road, so moderation will be slow, but I’m honored to be having a healthier conversation with you all about this stuff!

To be quite clear, I think he could have written that post about any service that is performed by a professional that a normal person could do as well if they just put the time into learning, like a…

- Lawn Mower
- Window Washer
- Mailman
- Nanny
- Web Designer
- Graphic Designer
- Carpet Layer
- Butcher

All of these can probably be done by just about anyone who wants to, but we hire professionals because they can, and absolutely should, perform these at a higher level of quality than we can ourselves. They are probably quicker as well.

I work on websites all the time that had been “Optimized” previously by the web developer. It is usually quite obvious that the developer did not know $#!+ about SEO and just sold their client an SEO “Snake Oil” primer to say that the site was optimized. It usually becomes evident the the site owner that this is the case and is whey they contact me. This is not always the case as there are many, many good Dev’s that actually Rock, but it happens more than it should!

Cheers to all developers that take SEO seriously!

Thanks for sharing. Search engine optimization is indeed one of the most crucial areas in Internet marketing, it is a perfect bridge between technology and business….

And you’re right – I was pissed, and I think I crossed that line between “making my point” and “sounding like an ass.” I’m generally not someone who tries to be an ass – and I know you probably aren’t either…yet we both find each other reaching for that adjective to describe the other (or at least I did).

So in the interest in making the point that I should have made earlier (and more clearly), what I meant to say is this:

There is great value in educating people (marketers, web developers, designers, whomever) about how search engines read and understand websites. Your claims that people should have “better content” or “better web development” but that we should not call that “SEO” may just be semantics, but I believe it’s more likely that they are quite short-sighted, and do not place any value on researching which keywords to use (because you say it’s “obvious”), or which competitors are already in that space.

About a billion people have chimed in today about the “black hats,” and those who I would call “spammers.” And because they’ve given SEO a bad name, we all have to live with that. But if you’re implying that there is no value in the discipline which I’ve described above, I’d call you foolish. If you’re implying that we shouldn’t call that SEO – I’ll still disagree, but I would say this has been a very silly exercise in semantics.

I won’t apologize for getting “personal.” You see, you used your personal blog, to attack thousands of people today. You say it was an “industry” but that industry is made up of individuals, and I’m one of them.

I would like to apologize for being an ass. That part was un-called for, and hypocritical, so I truly am sorry.

But, whatever. You’re pissed. I get it. Just know that my posts were not attacking you personally. It’d be nice if you paid me the same courtesy.

Thanks for stopping by – I didn’t know you were a regular reader of my blog, but I’m thrilled to know that you are (wait…unless you found my article through some sort of search engine?).

Yes, yes, Copyright laws…another subject on which you are clearly an expert! Would you mind writing a post on those too? Maybe you should make a blanket statement like “Hey World, Copyright laws are for douchebags!” or “If you practice fair use, you have no brain.”

Anyway…back to copyrights, you’re gonna wanna look at some precedents around “fair use.” You know, like when an entity is using an image for non-commercial reasons and “in a review or criticism for purposes of illustration or comment.” Here is some further reading for you: http://www.copyright.gov/fls/fl102.html

You’ll probably need to issue a DCMA takedown on this site (my traffic topped 200 visits last month!). But before you do that – you’ll want to google (or use collecta if you’d rather) “the streisand effect.” You wouldn’t want to pull a Ralph Lauren: http://www.boingboing.net/2009/10/06/the-criticism-that-r.html

By the way – I did comment after that first one, and I did leave my URL off. That comment was removed too.